I’ve not lived in my own place, with furniture and belongings around me, for a good chunk of my life.
I’ve never owned a fridge. Nor a washing machine. Nor an iron.
Six years ago I gave everything away, reducing my belongings to two suitcases, and decamped to a (frugally furnished) army shed in the forest just outside Byron Bay.
Since then I’ve lived out of two suitcases of belongings (sometimes just the one, for six months at a time), buying very little and roaming from Byron to Sydney to the Northern Beaches to London to Europe. And back. In and out of Air BnBs. Creating a community around me in Paris, London, Narrabeen – finding great yoga classes, cafes and libraries to work in, friendly grocers, friends in random places.
I got as far as buying a couch once. But moved before really getting around to sitting on it. It’s now in a tiny storage shed, along with a few other bits and pieces. I’m down to one suitcase again.
There’s much to say on living life as a nomad. Perhaps I’ll say more soon.
But today I wanted to share another thought I picked up in Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City (last week I shared the value of loneliness).
She, too, is a nomad, living between sublet accommodations. Like me, she enters other people’s spaces, and